


Morocco

by gyromitra



Series: FEAR!AU [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Complicated Relationships, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Interrogation, M/M, Military Murder Husbands, Morally Suspect Characters, Torture, bloody76week, f.e.a.r.!AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-17 18:20:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21058868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyromitra/pseuds/gyromitra
Summary: A jolt of pain to his ribs wakes him up. He cannot feel his hands behind his back. Someone barks a command at him in French. Moroccan accent. Get up. Profanities follow.It’s never ‘if’, it’s ‘when’. Everyone breaks, eventually.The only way they ever refer to it is 'the Morocco op'.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I REALLY wanted to write out 'the Morocco op' thing for some time, and promised myself to do it for the event, but couldn't get earlier inspiration for it. It's still some backstory for the main plot but has no bearing on it except for minute details (and one bigger that's not covered yet). Anyway, torture porn, goes with Justice/Vengeance, Hero/Monster, and Broken/Mending. So, very humble thing in comparison to the other hings so far, but what's a dude to do?

The light shines directly into his eyes, and the chair he’s cuffed to - both wrists and ankles - is securely fixed to the floor. Jack curls his upper lip somewhat. He’s not above appreciating the setup but that’s a missed opportunity for psychological impact. At least the intelligence had been right, for once. It may look temporary but the sickly smell of fear and suffering hangs in the air, speaks of the frequent use of the room. It’s something primal you can’t get rid of that easy, a warning signal from one animal to another.

Behind the light, he can almost see someone’s silhouette, pegs them immediately as the one to oversee the interrogation. The one that will put in the real work comes closer - Jack can almost discern his features - and barks out a question.

“John Morrison, Sergeant First Class of the United States Army, service number...” The first blow comes with a resounding crack inside his head as it throws him to the side in the chair. The tendons in his neck protest against the unexpected and forced stretch. Jack draws in a slow breath. Turns back to the man with a wide smile on his face. “You hit like a syphilitic whore.”

That earns him another two blows, rapid, one after another - the angle all wrong, downwards, more grazing than damaging. Still cuts the inside of his cheek on his teeth.

“That whore your mother or sister?” Jack asks before they can repeat the question. He would laugh for added effect but at this stage he clenches his jaw shut, would be detrimental to suffer a serious injury other than the bullet hole in his thigh this early.

After the round, Jack spits the blood - and something more solid - to the side. Every sensation dulls except for the pulsating pain in his mouth flaring up with each breath, and his tongue feels numb and sluggish, he must have bitten it involuntarily. They speak something. He has to focus to understand, takes him several seconds to process the words. Again, the same question.

“John Morrison, Sergeant First...”

The newest set leaves him slouched forward in the chair, bloody saliva dripping down, the nose probably broken. He feels almost nothing save for thrumming in his ears, listening, waiting, coiled like a spring. A hand grabs his chin and forces his head up, Jack squints trying to pick out features, anything, where - why - then it clicks, and he offers the interrogator another deranged smile. He leans back and spits into the man’s face, it lands on his cheek. No more questions. The cuffs bite into his skin with each strike. It’s methodical now, his head snapping from side to side. Good, something in the back of his mind notes, that part’s over. Finally, darkness.

He wakes up to the pain that flares up when he tries to move. He spits out the mess of congealed blood and saliva gathered in his mouth out of instinct before he can stop himself - coughs trying to dislodge whatever's stuck in his throat and almost blacks out again. Mistake.

Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. Repeat. You wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it. Flashes and fragments. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.

Jack takes the stock of the damage. His left eye is close to swollen shut. The nose is blocked, feels like stuffed full of cotton. Broken, all right. Right eye fares much better, good the fucker’s not ambidextrous, Jack would prefer to keep some of his field of vision for what’s coming. He moves the swollen tongue along the gums. One tooth’s missing, another’s chipped, and the third one he’s not sure if it’s there or not, or if that’s his jaw broken.

Slowly, with the neck protesting any movement, he slopes forward, to bring his face into the range his left hand has in the cuff. The skin on his wrists, under the metal, is mostly intact - if bruised. It would only take dislocating his thumb to get free of one set. The ones on his ankles are the problem, and the attentive fuckers took his earring - no go.

Carefully, Jack traces the line of his chin with his fingers. The hurt hits like a sledgehammer. He almost throws up, his stomach tied in knots with reactive nausea. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. Complicated fracture, apparently - broken, but the bone keeps itself together as long as he doesn’t aggravate it too much. So much for avoiding additional injuries. Jack straightens in the chair with his eyes closed, riding out the new wave of pain. Keep it together. It’s never ‘if’, it’s ‘when’. Everyone breaks, eventually. Schooling his breathing, he searches for symptoms of a concussion. It would be easier if he had one.

He could kill for a cigarette.

When the door opens, and he notices the bottles of water and the bundled cloth, Jack laughs out loud. He’s still chuckling when the water pours.


	2. The Animal

Inside everyone, there’s an animal. It wants to live. It wants to take another breath. When it comes, there’s no place left for anything else. They can train you. They can prepare you. You are never ready, for that moment when the human you stops existing, and the animal takes your place.

With each repetition - fifth, sixth, fourth? - it takes more time, more effort, to claw himself back to the surface, and with each repetition more and more of the animal remains. Snarling and thrashing. Panicked. Hysterical.

Jack takes a big gulp of air before the rag is back on his face but then the variation comes, the cloth is forced between his teeth – and deeper, almost into his throat. He tries to fight against it, bites down, and the scrape of the broken bone against the other edge, he hears it, the internal vibration. He doesn’t realize, not entirely, that his muscles become slack with the shock, and at that moment something else finds its way into his mouth, cylindrical, cushioned by the cloth.

The beginning is never that bad – it’s enough to hold his breath, not like he has an alternative – until the animal comes back. This time, Jack can taste it. He gags at the bitter tang of brine; it trickles down his throat, and he has no choice left but to concentrate on swallowing, and then he’s drowning again.

He had seen people drown in their blood. He had held their eyes. He had watched impassively as they fought for a breath of air that was never enough. Maybe it was something like this. Now it’s his turn to go under. Karma’s a bitch.

He comes to with a sharp twist in his guts and vicious stinging in his eyes and throat. For the longest time there is nothing else, until he hears it – the laughter slowly fading in – and the strange keening noise: raising, stopping, repeating. He picks up a name, Rachid, from the animated discussion taking place only feet away from him. Rachid, the overseer. Jack starts to doubt he’s getting out alive.

The whine plateaus and drops, again and again. It’s coming from him. He doesn’t know how to stop it. Doesn’t care to stop it as his stomach cramps up and he surges forward in the chair, pukes all over the floor between his feet until there is nothing else to spew, and then his throat still seizes up with dry heaves. There’s blood on the cuffs. The left shoulder feels dislocated.

Someone pulls up his head by the hair.

“Want to talk, G.I. Joe?”

Jack snarls at him.

“…that’s what your mother said yesterday.”

“Une fois de plus.”

Rinse and repeat. The animal comes and goes, and each time it’s more and more of it remaining behind. There’s only a sliver of him when they leave him in the darkness. Jack licks his parched lips. Salt.

Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. I wouldn’t trust anyone else. Pain becomes background radiation he can drift on. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.

“I don’t trust the intel. If the whole op goes tits up…”

“You wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it,” he interrupts Gabriel. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”

“Enemy territory. We won’t get any support.”

“We never do. Ana’s the whole support we need. If it goes as planned, we will get Benjelloun’s nephew, what’s his face?”

“Mehdi.”

“Yeah, him. Consider it payback for the hotel.”

Gabriel chuckles. Puts his palm on the back of Jack’s head and pulls him closer until they’re standing with their foreheads touching.

“After we get back, I’ll fuck you into the mattress.”

“Yeah, sure, you can even thrash me around a bit.”

“We have a deal, Sunshine.”

Forty-eight hours later they’re in Morocco. Jack falls behind.

When his elbow slips from the armrest, the jolt of pain in the shoulder brings him out from the dream – or was that a memory? It all blends together into a strange amalgam without beginning or end. He’s never getting out alive. He will die here. Fuck, he would kill for a smoke before he kicks the bucket.

Jack only hopes Ana will stick around. To remind Gabriel he’s not a monster. Someone’s got to if he’s not going to be there to do it himself.


End file.
